The Little Old Lady Who Struck Lucky Again!

by Ingelman-Sundberg, Catharina

  The police officers jumped out of the vans with guns in their hands and ran down towards the sauna by the bay. It took a while before she took in what was happening, but then she immediately went out onto the road. She looked down towards the beach just in time to see how Tompa, Jörgen and the others were running up the hill with the police after them. They were all sweaty and red and ran as fast as their legs would carry them, with the towels around their waists fluttering like washing on a clothes line in a storm. One after the other, the wet towels fell to the ground but the boys kept on running. In the end the police caught up with them and managed to handcuff each and every one. Lillemor had never seen so many half-naked, sweaty guys at one time, let alone all chased by the police. She stared at Tompa and felt sorry for him when two burly officers pushed him into the van together with the other boys from Bandangels. Then the police checked that nobody was hiding up in the yellow house.

  Up there, they didn’t find any more bikers, but they did find a shop dummy with burnt leather clothes. It looked really hilarious when a policeman came down the hill pulling the shop dummy behind him. And then, just as he was approaching one of the police vans, something weird happened. The head fell off and a bundle of banknotes fell to the ground. Banknote after banknote was caught by the wind and it was quite a while before the policeman realized it.

  The driver wound down his side window and shouted: ‘Blomberg, damn it, be careful with the dummy. Can’t you see the banknotes? The money from the robbery, that’s what she said, the woman who phoned. And just look at that! I think she was right!’

  ‘Yes, yes, OK!’ Blomberg muttered.

  ‘But run after those banknotes, then, and pick them up!’ Carlsson gesticulated wildly.

  ‘And you can shut up!’ Blomberg retorted, but, nevertheless, he ran after the money, put it back in the dummy and obediently screwed the head back on. Then, still swearing, he carried the dummy the last few paces to the van and asked Carlsson to unlock the back doors.

  Lillemor stared. Perhaps not so much at the police as at the half-naked Tompa in one of the vans. While she studied his flabby body, she consoled herself. She hadn’t succeeded in seducing him, but perhaps she hadn’t missed so very much after all.

  The Volvo with its trailer roared along at a decent speed on Värmdövägen and it was not long before the Skuru Bridge appeared before them.

  ‘You must turn off after the bridge,’ said Emma, and Anders nodded. Below them the water glistened and the fancy old country houses – reminiscent of the one they had just abandoned – climbed up the steep banks. On the horizon they could see the first yachts of the season and the shores were rich in greenery. Soon nature would be at its most beautiful, but just now they didn’t have time to enjoy it. They were on the run, and the oldies would come at any minute. As soon as they had passed Skuru Bridge, Anders turned off to the right, then took another right turn and finally came to a halt beside the ditch. He kept the engine running.

  ‘Righto, now all we have to do is wait,’ he said.

  ‘I’m getting out for a smoke,’ Emma answered, and she lit a cigarette, opened the door and stepped out. She put the lighter back in her pocket, inhaled the smoke and started to cough. They could have been out sailing now, but instead Martha had instructed them to ‘prepare the next phase’. They were accomplices in a crime, and now she was reminded of that fact. Thank God there wasn’t so much more to do. Soon the League of Pensioners would leave the big city and be able to lead a peaceful existence. And Emma did have little Malin to look after, didn’t she? There was really a bit too much criminal activity, and five or six oldies to look after, too. On the other hand, Martha had actually given her a million, so later in the summer that sailing holiday would indeed come about. Anders got out too, cadged a cigarette and lit it. They stood there smoking quite a long time while they waited.

  ‘Do you think we’ll have a calmer life when they leave town?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, to be honest, with that lot you never know what can happen.’

  ‘No, you’re right about that. Never!’

  When Martha skidded to a halt in the car park she saw, to her relief, that Anders and Emma were ready and waiting. They had fastened a sticker to the Volvo with the name SENIOR CLEANERS and everything seemed calm. She drove up beside them and wound down her side window. The two stubbed out their cigarettes.

  ‘Everything’s ready, but it was a tight fit getting the cleaning trolley in,’ said Anders, pointing at the Volvo.

  ‘And what about the plastic bags?’

  ‘Oh yes, everything’s under control, we put them in the trailer.’

  ‘Fine, then we’ll change places,’ said Martha, and she got out of the minibus. Christina got out too.

  ‘Goodbye, everybody, and keep your fingers crossed that it’ll all work out. See you!’ she said and she waved to the others in the back seats.

  ‘Yes, we wish you good luck,’ said Brains and Anna-Greta in unison and Rake leaned forward and urged Martha to take good care of Christina.

  ‘But of course, you can rest assured,’ she answered. ‘We have actually practised this, Christina and me. Practised in secret.’

  So when Anders and Emma left the Volvo estate and got into the front of the minibus, Martha got in the driver’s seat of the Volvo. She started the car and was just about to drive off when Christina grabbed the door handle.

  ‘Don’t forget me,’ she said, and she squeezed herself in with her mop and brush and pan.

  ‘No, no, no way, and that’s excellent that you’ve got all your cleaning equipment,’ Martha mumbled, ashamed because, being in such a hurry, she had almost set off without her friend. ‘You do have your pills to keep your blood pressure up?’ she asked to be on the safe side, because you never knew with Christina, who had a tendency to faint as soon as things started to get complicated. ‘Of course,’ said her friend, looking in her pockets. But the pills weren’t there, she had indeed forgotten them. But then, thankfully, she became so irritated that her blood pressure went up anyway.

  Martha took the lead into Stockholm with the minibus discreetly keeping its distance two or three cars behind her. When they got close to the Historical Museum, Anders steered in towards the car park on Narvavägen to wait while Martha turned into the museum and parked in the yard. There she opened the car door and she and Christina got out of the car as best they could. They went round to the back doors, opened them and pulled out the cleaning trolley with the rubbish bags, dusters, cleaning fluids and two red buckets. Martha looked around her, noticed some children on their way in through the entrance, but otherwise it was all quiet. Christina put the cleaning materials on top of the rubbish bags and then the two elderly cleaning ladies walked towards the entrance. When they were about to go inside, Martha noticed something strange about Anders’ car. She stared at it a long time before she saw what it was. On one side it said SENIOR CLEANERS but, on the other, they had put the sign saying CONTROL UNIT FOR STANDARDS IN RETIREMENT HOMES. Oh dear, oh dear, they’d got it wrong in the hurry, but Martha consoled herself with the fact that Control Unit for Standards in Retirement Homes and Senior Cleaners did at least sound as if they might be part of the same organization. With renewed courage, she and Christina went in through the door and made their way to the Gold Room.

  ‘Now we just walk nice and calmly and try to avoid attracting attention,’ Martha whispered on their way in, but she had hardly said that before she heard a strange noise behind her. She turned round but, despite looking in every direction, she couldn’t see anything close to her. It was not until she rolled the cleaning trolley towards the Wishing Well that she noticed she was trailing a cable. By mistake, they had taken the mop with Brains’s built-in compass saw and now the cable snaked along on the floor behind them. If only it had been the battery-driven mop, but this was the first prototype, the one with a cable. Thankfully, the museum had so few staff that nobody noticed anything. There wasn’t a guard in sight.

  ‘Don’t
say we’ve got that robot vacuum cleaner with us too,’ Martha mumbled, but then she remembered that Emma had taken care of that. For a short while she felt relieved, until she noticed that there was something about the long brush. It felt unusually heavy. But perhaps she was just imagining things because she was so nervous, and, besides, there was nothing she could do about it now anyway.

  ‘Right, I think we’ll start by cleaning around the Wishing Well,’ she said and she tried to sound calm and controlled.

  Christina nodded, and the two ladies made their way as discreetly and nonchalantly as possible towards the Wishing Well with their cleaning trolley. The water glittered magically and in the restricted light you could see the shining coins that museum visitors had thrown in. It was here and now that they should start their much-practised cleaning session and make use of the well. First sweep and wipe the floor, and then in with the gold! Everything ought to work nicely. It was just that when Martha put down the brush, she realized that things were not right. The floor brush was not an ordinary floor brush, but a battery-driven lawn mower. Brains had long since considered that lawn mowers were too large and unwieldy for ladies and had thought up a new variety. To make it especially attractive for women he had designed it to look like cleaning equipment and this was evidently just such an apparatus. As everyone knows, you should never be in a hurry when you pack things, and now Martha – unaware of the error – put down the heavy, but elegantly designed floor brush and the apparatus started up with a hop followed by a deep roar, which would have frightened a horse to death. With a noisy clinking and clonking sound the apparatus set off across the stone floor at a wild speed with Martha hanging on for all she was worth, like a tail. She tried to make it stop, but the floor brush was not even an ordinary lawnmower, it was evidently a hotted-up version.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Christina shouted in a shrill voice.

  ‘I’m chasing a floor brush,’ Martha hissed in reply.

  At that moment, amidst the thunderous racket, a school class stormed into the room. The noise from the school children drowned the sound of the lawnmower just as effectively as any underground explosions. The entire room vibrated.

  ‘Oh look, wow that’s great!’ a girl shouted out the very same moment that the floor brush rammed the railings around the Wishing Well and got stuck. The engine was racing but finally Martha, with shaking hands, managed to find the on/off switch. Still somewhat shocked, she leaned against the railings to get her strength back, only to be resuscitated quickly by Christina again.

  ‘Martha, I think there’s one thing we’ve forgotten,’ her friend said.

  ‘Just one thing?’ Martha answered.

  ‘Just feel this, and then you’ll see. The rubbish bags are too heavy. We’re not going to manage to lift them over the railings and throw them into the Wishing Well.’

  ‘Oh God, not that too!’

  Martha fumbled in her pockets for find her mobile so that she could phone for help but then she realized she had forgotten her iPhone and left it in the car. She and Christina had, of course, only intended to walk past the Wishing Well with their cleaning trolley and then discreetly slip the rubbish bags with the gold into the water when nobody was watching, and then get out of there. Now they were standing, dressed in their white cleaner overalls, with the trolley full of stolen gold while the room was filling up with raucous schoolchildren. Christina started to fumble for her blood pressure pills and Martha searched in her pockets for her Jungle Roar pastilles. Then a gang of shouting boys rushed up to them making enough noise to wake the dead.

  ‘A lady as old as you can’t work as a cleaner, can she?’ said the oldest with a cap and a dental brace, pointing at Martha. His mate, who was chewing some gum, grinned widely.

  ‘No, when you are as old as me, then you’re dead,’ Martha answered and gave him a piercing look. ‘Listen to me, lad, I am at least working, but you and your mates are just shouting and making a disturbance. I bet you can’t even lift up a rubbish bag!’

  ‘Oh yes, sure I can!’ the youngster laughed out loud and his mate smirked.

  ‘That’s just empty boasting. You couldn’t even lift this up out of the trolley.’

  ‘What? You think that’s heavy?’ His mate came to life.

  ‘We can lift up those rubbish bags and throw them into the well, but you can’t! I bet you don’t dare throw them into the Wishing Well!’ Martha scorned him.

  She affected a superior laugh, and more than that was not needed. The boy waved to his mates and the next moment they had brusquely pushed her aside.

  ‘I’ll show you!’ said the boy with the dental brace, and he gave her a challenging look. Then he grabbed hold of one of the bags, lifted it up and threw it down into the well. That was the signal for the others, and now they, too, threw down the rest of the bags to the accompaniment of gorilla-like roars.

  ‘What about that, then, Granny?’ The boy with the brace grinned.

  ‘Oh goodness me! Gosh, you are strong, you boys, aren’t you!’ said Martha, and clapped her hands in pretend admiration.

  Then she walked off with Christina, with the mop cable trailing behind them. The two ladies discreetly withdrew towards the entrance and this time, when Martha went out to the street, there were, thankfully, no policemen waiting for her. She and Christina could calmly walk back to the car. They put the cleaning trolley in the back, made sure the brush-cum-lawnmower and the mop-cum-saw were pushed in too, and closed the door. Then they drove off and hooted when they passed Anders and the others on Narvavägen. Admittedly, nobody had started to chase them yet, but both Martha and Anders drove out of town as fast as they possibly could. Because, even though they had actually given back Sweden’s ancient gold treasures, the League of Pensioners was still guilty of many spectacular robberies. It would probably be best to lie low for a while until everything had blown over.

  Epilogue

  The depressing November darkness rolled across the district early in the afternoon and the rain was cold and heavy. In the dusk among the fir trees, the landscape was deserted except for a tiny flickering light far away. Deep in the forest, if you got close enough, you could see a building with some weak light visible from the windows. As if somebody actually lived there in the midst of this rocky terrain, which was almost entirely covered with forest. If you dared to go closer, you could indeed see an old dry-stone wall around a little smallholding. Behind it was a well-maintained cottage and, behind that, a little yard with a minibus and a Volvo estate. Candles were burning on the windowsills. Outside the little town of Vetlanda in southern Sweden, there had been yet another power cut.

  ‘It is rather cosy with candles, don’t you think?’ said Martha. ‘But, Brains dear, perhaps you can start up the generator? We want to get onto the Internet.’ She patted the lifeless computer where they had now run out of battery power. Since Anna-Greta had taught her a bit about computers, she was always wanting to surf the web and that wasn’t so easy here in deepest Småland.

  ‘Yes, Brains, darling, we must get online. It’s important that we make our payments in time,’ Anna-Greta added.

  Their plans for the project All Inclusive were fully underway and it was important to keep the payments up to date. They used gift vouchers and bank cards which were handed out every week via a flower delivery service to the country’s retirement homes and other needy parties. The Las Vegas money – or rather the profit from the sales of the Beyling warehouse goods (depending on how you looked at it) – had meant that they could buy three blocks of flats in good positions in the posh district of Östermalm in Stockholm and the money they got in from rent was used for charity purposes. Gunnar and Anna-Greta saw to it that the money went direct to retirement homes, nursing homes, schools, theatres, museums and other institutions they wished to support, and the recipients received the money together with a bunch of flowers. The flower delivery was not really necessary, but Martha thought it was so much nicer to hand out money in that way, even though the League of Pe
nsioners sometimes varied the routine, and sent the money together with a basket of fruit. The Las Vegas income had also been sufficient to pay for a little old forest farm in Småland for themselves, and they had a delightful old building with outhouses, a stable, a woodshed and a large workshop where Brains could experiment. They intended lying low here until the hunt for the gold robbers was over. Because, even though they had taken the loot back, you never knew what the police might do.

  They all missed their big old house on Värmdö, and the excitement of their life there, but they also knew that the Småland farm was only a temporary solution. Brains hadn’t seen a real Harley-Davidson for several months and he consoled himself by going on-line and looking at pictures of them. Rake, for his part, said nothing about Lillemor, but you could see that he brought out his Tarot cards sometimes. Christina sighed to herself but let him be. Then she realized that she could teach him to pick wild mushrooms, and, after patiently going through all the different varieties in the forest around them, they had gone on long walks together. He became something of an expert and it wasn’t long before he was almost keener than she was. Anna-Greta and Gunnar spent most of their time sitting in front of the computer. It was mainly their responsibility to make sure that all the money transfers worked properly, and they liked giving away so much money. They often played their new gramophone records very loudly so that you could hear the music in all the upstairs rooms, but as they had tired of Jokkmokks-Jokke’s ‘Gulligullan’ and horn music, it didn’t matter so much. Now they often listened to gospel and Verdi, and the others liked that too.

  Martha herself had calmed down a little. Since she didn’t have access to all the gym apparatuses, she settled for a thirty-minute session every day. To keep them in good form she urged the gang to go for a one-hour walk every day, and since Rake hoped to find some mushrooms on the way, he didn’t protest like he certainly would have done otherwise.